


An Adventure Of Sorts

by easystreets



Category: All the Pretty Horses - Cormac McCarthy
Genre: Fix-It, Fluff, M/M, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:54:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26095936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easystreets/pseuds/easystreets
Summary: A re-write of the ending. Or: John Grady comes back to Rawlins. John Grady always comes back to him.
Relationships: John Grady Cole/Lacey Rawlins
Comments: 12
Kudos: 3
Collections: Gen Prompt Bingo Round 18





	An Adventure Of Sorts

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading in advance! I hope you enjoy. This was written for the prompt: fix it fic.
> 
> Edit: I added more line breaks. I know Cormac doesn't do it, but he writes on a typewriter and is eighty-three. I am a high school student writing fic on a half-alive laptop. We are not the same.

They had hitched up both John Grady’s horse and Rawlins own in the barn and now the sun was setting and there was much to be said and words bubbling like dirty water spilling through the streets on the back of Rawlin’s tongue. He was back. That was something certain.

But John Grady was different, something had changed, there were lines where there hadn’t been and a stitch in his leg when he walked and emptiness behind his eyes. He was a prisoner of his own war. Rawlins wasnt sure if he was so much alive as a walking dead. Sometimes horses abandoned in desert quarries died standing up and they stood until their bones disintegrated from underneath. Perhaps this was like that.

He wanted to touch John Grady and give him a hug or at least rest a hand on his shoulder and feel the blood running through his veins like water rapids in the river, assuring himself that this was the real John Cole Grady, but he did not. He looked easily breakable and so Rawlins held his hands in the dusty pockets of his jeans the way you held tight the bridle of a coltish horse. He was afraid to scare him. And before touch had been so easy.

I caint believe youre alive, he said.

Yeah, said John. Yeah.

Youre all skinnbones.

He was thin and the white pearl of his skinned kneecaps shone under the rip in his jeans. Rawlins wondered if hed thought to buy new clothes on the way in. Probably not but Rawlins had some from before in his closet that were smaller and would probably fit John Grady. He could run him a bath with well-water.

Come in. Rawlins went for the buckets and watched the water drip-drip-drip its way up the well and saw John Grady rest against the doorstop for a moment before entering the home, tilting his hat over his eyes and inflating his lungs like a balloon at the county fair. He filled three and went to heat them and messily dumped them into the porcelain bath. It was a new fixture in their home and his father was very proud of it. This thought reminded him of John Gradys father and he hoped in his heart that John didnt know but Rawlins knew that he had to have known, for something very delicate breaks inside a man the day his father dies whether he knows it or not. I ran you a bath. I got clothes for you. Should fit.

John Grady shuffled up from the couch and grabbed at his thigh. Goddamnit. Keep me company while Im in there why dont you.

Rawlins nodded and reached a towel for John from the linen hamper and shut the door behind them even though they both knew that Lacey’s father would not be home until the last pub had booted its broken and drunken out onto the dusty roads. It was good to have a door shut and it made them feel safe to be inside a house.  
He sat on the can and watched as John Grady unbuttoned his shirt. Loose tobacco fell out of the pocket as he turned it over and set it on the counter. His ribs were a brilliant purple and the blue was like the stark stripes of cerulean in a clouded Texan sky and Rawlins drew a breath in for he felt ashamed. Ashamed for leaving his best friend and partner behind. Ashamed that they both not had been together for the hurt and bravely reveled in the pain together. Solitary pain was the worst kind he knew and it was tough to bear it alone. John Grady ran a self-conscious hand across his abdomen. The stomach was scarred and pale and criss-crossed with grey lines that faintly suggested that stitches had made a home there once.

Dont look at me like that. John slid off his pants and it was there that he saw the thigh. Mangled flesh and missing skin and hot red where his jeans had chafed against it. It was so bad and his eyes burned and he wanted to look away but he couldnt because he was sorry for John Grady and he needed him to know that he did not think of him as some hurt ruined thing but rather someone that had been through many terrible and horrific and searing obtrusions to who he was as a person and had come out alive and still kind and gentle.

The waters hot. I heated it. Rawlins watched the dust spiral off his friend and for a moment they were silent. When they were boys they spent every moment together and would swim in streams and even splash in troughs of water and he knew John Grady’s body like it was his own. Now it was older and exhausted but still the same spindly legs and gentle curve of the neck and sunburnt skin. Blood swam dirty brown in the water and he watched John Grady as he lathered his legs and avoided the thigh for the soap would sting it.

My father is dead right.

Im sorry I was going to tell you. He was in a bad way. 

Its alright. I kind of knew it there for a while. When I was settin in the prison and allthat. And when I went and got the horses I was sure he was gone. Nothing felt the same.

Yeah. Everything just feels different dont it. When you come back. People aint the same.

  
John Grady rose and the water rippled under him and Rawlins handed him a towel and clothes and was about to leave him to dress. But then he remembered the riveting pain his own abdomen had felt in the first months after and even sometimes now when it was frigid outside or he stretched a bit too wide and picked up the maroon button-up shirt and helped John Grady’s skinny arms through it. He buttoned it and fixed the collar and felt his heart beat slow and quiet as he did.

People aint the same. John nodded. He slid on his boxers with some difficulty.

  
I was plannin to be honest on just settin there and dyin a couple of times. It wouldve been easier. But I wanted to go home. Jus to prove that I made it I guess. And to see you. I didnt want to leave ya hanging. John said with his face all nervous. Like they hadnt both thought it.

Yeah. Rawlins handed him the pair of jeans and offered his shoulder for support. He smelled good like bathwater and lye and sunbrazen horse and hay. I wondered that stuff too. If it had been me instead of Blevins or something. I didnt want to leave you either but if I had I would be one sorry sonofabitch.

John Grady buckled his belt and ducked his head down. His feet were bruised in the ridges that had grown too big for his boots and tomorrow they would have to go into town and buy him new ones and nicer pants and comfortable shirts. Rawlins did not want him to hurt more than he already did.

Blevins was just a kid. He didnt know any better and thats why he died. It was a sorry thing.

I dont understand it. That kid. I never liked him from the day I met him but when I think about him it makes me so upset. He was good for nothing sides riding a horse and so damn nervy. He was like a tagalong younger brother and I only ever knew him for two weeks but I seen him a little boy die. Rawlins bit his tongue and felt his eyes burn. The bathroom was small and the smell of dried blood was overpowering. He unlatched the door and held it open and waited for John Grady to stumble out and hoped to all God that he did not see the wet tears snaking its way down his cheek. He did not cry often for men did not cry over anything that could be fixed or was sensical but Blevins made no sense and was not something he could mend with his own two leathered hands. There was not anyone who knew of his death either other than John Grady and so he had quietly cried about it with his knees pressed to his chin on his mattress and his face red and dappled with angry tears.

You know I brought that damn horse all the way to goddamn Jimmy Blevins the radio preacher, John Grady said suddenly. He seemed as if he did not know where to stand or even how, as if that information had been a secret backbone of sorts in him, and Rawlins lead him to the kitchen. He tussled through the pantry as John Grady hummed quiet curses under his breath as he sat down and bent the thigh muscle and decided that they would have a dinner out on the hilly area outside his home, where they had spent many a night before as children passing a bottle of soda back and forth and talking about horses always horses and how they were going to go on a big adventure some day.

So he lied about his name. Rawlins said, because he did not know what else to say. It was a beautiful deranged thing to do and yet John Grady had done it anyway for a wild-child that neither of them had ever quite liked. He liked that about John Grady. Liked that he loved big and yet held his cards tight but did the right thing when it mattered and saw the world in an indiscriminate beauty. It was good of you to do. Dyou still believe in God.

John Grady grinned slightly at him with his mouth in a half-rictus and ran his bitten tongue over his lips for a moment. Rawlins watched with warm eyes as he thought. He set out four slices of american bread on a kerchief and spread peanut butter on all four of them and jam on just two because John Grady didnt like it and hadnt since they were kids and had seen a coyote with its head smashed in a wire fence, blood spilt and dried all over the hot desert and fear set in its eyes.

I do I think. John finally said. Rawlins reached for two bottles of cherry coke. There was good sherry in the bottom of the pantry and thought of grabbing it but the smell of it made him sick and reminded him too closely of the anti-septics used in hospitals. He liked american coke even if it didnt taste the same as the mexican he was used to. I think I have to believe in God but I dont think He controls everything or the world would be less of an ugly place.

I aint ever go to church. And He treated me pretty good. And I say His name in vain so maybe he only has control over the little things like sunsets or how good of a shoot you are and the rest is up to yourself. Rawlins loaded their things into a picnic basket and found a soft blanket and a pillow in case John Grady wanted it for his thigh. Maybe they could go see a doctor for it, he thought. It was a pretty terrible thing to live with so young.

Yeah. Hes been good to me I suppose.

You can ride Redbo and Ill lead him. Shouldnt be walking up this hill.

You gonna give me a pony ride Lacey. John Grady snickered at this and his face contorted into beautiful laughter.

Aww shove it. He did not like to be called Lacey by many for it had always seemed girlish to him but Rawlins did not mind it when John Grady said it.

They rode up the hill and tied up Redbo and allowed the horse to graze. The sun was setting and the barn was behind them, red and jubilant and it all painted a very pretty picture. John Grady lazed out on the ground and picked stray flowers. Rawlins mother had died when he was young and he did not recall much of her aside from whisps of perfume and how kindly she had been but he had been taught the names of the few wildflowers that survived in the Texas sun by her and he mentioned them quietly to John Grady as he gathered them from the flaxen grass. Bluebonnets and indian paintbrushes and orangey-goldish latana that he liked to lace in his horses hair when nobody was looking. Chocolate flowers and indian blankets.

This is good. John Grady lit a cigarette and delicately flopped onto his back besides Rawlins. He stared up at him with big brown eyes and the bags under them and Rawlins could not bring himself to look away. He had wanted this so badly for nearly a year now and they were not the same people anymore but there was a special kind of understanding between them that only two folks who have shared the same hardship have. And the understanding felt good. He tickled John Gradys cheek with one of the bluebonnets.

It wasnt the same with you not around. I came back and everyone was asking where you were. He tilted his hat back and squinted into the sun. Rawlins wondered if there was a Heaven and if Blevins was up there. That damned kid. John Grady laughed a little and then put a hand to his stomach in case blood had somehow seeped onto Rawlins shirt.

I missed ya too.

This town is different. It aint like before.

Yeah. Hey scoot over. Rawlins shifted on the blanket so that he was leaning on his left and he was facing John Grady, who was completely flat on his back like a corpse in the desert. He tilted back the brim of Johns hat and smiled.

We should get out of here, John said. I caint stand to be around these people no more.

You gonna leave me behind.

No. I aint. And dont you say that. John frowned up into the great orange sun. Youre different.

Youre still the exact same you know. Always see the good in me.

John Grady shrugged and wrapped his hand around Laceys arm and did not let go. Relax. You aint so bad.

I am I really am. I left you an I left Blevins. No good is what I am.

His head was stiff and jerky like a doe’s final thrashing moments. He couldnt bring himself to relax until John Grady began running his fingers across the pattern of his shirt and the sensitive skin of his stomach. Rawlins finally rested his head on the blanket with his forehead pressed against John Gradys like two sole surviving siblings and neither of them spoke until the mandarin sun had dipped beneath the craggy arrays of adobe rocks and the sky was a dark and hopeful black.

You always see good in people. Rawlins managed to say. He leaned in closer. John’s hand was on his side and he could feel the warm weight of it on his side and it felt so good he never wanted to move but he knew that he could for they would have many comfortable nights like these in their future. Rawlins took a deep breath in and felt Johns pulse and knew he was asleep by the shy fluttering of his eyelashes and squeezed him tight. He shut his own eyes, and had no trouble falling asleep, for they would have plenty to do in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> If you read this, please comment! I worked hard on this and it means a lot to know someone enjoyed it. Or didn't enjoy it. I've never gotten a hate comment before either so if you want to bestow that blessing upon me, be my guest! Also I don't know if Rawlins' father was canonically an alcoholic or if my brain just made that up, so if there are any other discrepancies with the source material, just let me know.


End file.
